I’m the first to admit that I too readily defend my favorite president. But I also have a relatively blind faith in the wisdom of my favorite magazine, and this article is seemingly calculated to make me question that faith. Sir, you’ve gone too far.
Sure, trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US is at best misguided policy, but I suspect this is more pep-rallying fluff than genuine belief in a zero-sum world. A president who has signed multiple free-trade agreements in his first term is hardly a protectionist, as the author unconvincingly suggests. To parse Obama’s words about “winning” into an endorsement of deliberately harming other countries -even going so far as to say ” … if America is determined to defeat other countries, it’s worth asking whether it wouldn’t make sense to deliberately sabotage other places, or bomb them … ” - is absurd. No, in fact that is not worth asking at all. I think this author must be the only person in the world who extracted “let’s go ahead and bomb other countries to gain economic advantage” from this SOTU address. More, ” … hell, one has to ask again whether the easiest way to prevent other countries from winning the race for the future isn’t simply to blow up their labs.” Really? Again, one doesn’t ever have to ask that. Blowing up other countries’ labs? Did Glenn Beck write this bullshit?
Leading the world in economic output doesn’t imply that other competitors won’t be just behind you. “Winning” in this sense doesn’t have to mean that others lose. Countering China’s use of direct subsidies, financial shenanigans, and currency manipulation with sensible domestic investments in research and education is fundamentally sound policy, as the author admits. Keep in mind that this is an election year, and Obama has to counter endless rhetorical vomit from his opposition about “apologizing to the world”. This SOTU was designed to sound patriotic and optimistic, as it should. The author readily acknowledges this. “Americans are motivated by competition and patriotism, and if that’s the only way to rally the country behind fundamentally sound policies like subsidies for basic research, then that’s the card you play. And, in practice, Mr Obama’s reforms will probably not do much more than offset the crummy, mercantilist choices made by other governments elsewhere. No one is talking about going back to the early 19th century, or to the days of communist containment.”
Yes, agreed. So why are you talking about bombing our competitors?
There are credible and reasonable criticisms to make about Obama’s presidency. This article does not make any.
If I remember correctly, The Economist supported Bush for talking about free trade, and politely defended him when he engaged in truly protectionist policies, such as the steel tariffs, as a politically required misstep. Why threaten your endorsement of Obama for just talking about America “winning” in a political rally while he actually engages in free trade agreements all over the world? I would think The Economist would be a little more savvy than this. I’m writing this off as one misguided rant, but I hope to not see any more of it in the future.
